A Series of Violin Strings and Lollipops
by spearmintsparrows
Summary: This is a collection of ficlets that range from tragic to heartwarming to just plain odd.In one, Damon might contemplate his former obsession with Katherine, in another Stefan might join the circus. I guess you'll just have to embrace it. OCs included.
1. Icicles and Strife

**A/N: I'm not entirely sure what this scene means. I kind of just wrote it by feel. The characters are my original character Lye and one of the Salvatore brothers. This pairing will be in other ficlets, but Delena and Stelena will have their say as well. Future ficlets can be about anyone and anything, including even the characters with the smallest roles and people doing the most ridiculous things. It all depends on how I'm inspired. I own nothing but Lye and these words. I hope you enjoy, and care to feed my review narwhal with some constructive criticism C: . **

The sky overhead was painted gray and dismal, matching the pace of my heart and my footsteps on the pavement. I probably looked criminally insane, dashing through the traffic. I didn't care. I had more important things-a more important _person _to worry about. Besides, my body was built with things a lot fiercer than cars in mind. By the time I rounded the corner, my hair was soaked pale with snow and despair. The scent I caught on the breeze was crimson, which could only supply a range of equally distasteful outcomes. The most likely of these was that he'd fed in his anger. He'd be upset at himself and me, and Stefan would be entirely Not Pleased. This was my fault.

I followed the heavy scent of iron past a great breach of trees and into a stretch of park framed and dotted by foliage. My feet fell into the thick snow in a fast procession. The blood smelled dead to me, like the separation between the cells and plasma had already begun. I hadn't known the difference, not really, when I'd started out- but after decades of doing my father's work, it was impossible to not notice. My stomach clenched against itself, forming odd little shapes of horror. It wasn't that I was particularly appalled by the death-I'd caused enough of it on my own in my past that if I recoiled from it now I'd be a hypocrite. It was that he'd been trying so hard to be _better, _to regain something pure in himself he'd lost after he'd entered this broken life. He'd been trying so hard for both of us.

I found him beneath the gray, on top of the too white snow. He was sprawled against the base of a wrought iron lamp, looking for all the world like a corpse-more so than even the honest one beside him. Her throat was completely destroyed. Things never meant to be seen outside the human body lay in stark contrast against the snow. It was cruel, it was slow, and it was gruesome. _It was my fault. _I strode closer, knowing it would be in my favour to show no weakness when I confronted him.

"You made a right mess of this one, pet." I whispered. He didn't look up, open his bloodstained mouth. His eyes kept close to the lamp light. Maybe he was somewhere else. Someplace safe, and someplace okay. "You can't leave her out in the frost. It's noticeable, and she deserves more than that media fair." Still no answer. Not a lift of his chest as he breathed in the calamity of the night.

"Stefan's at home. Elena, too. Jeremy…his body's there. I'm not sure where he left his mind. But you're not, and I'm not. That's not right." In the quiet of his anger, I decided to dig until I got a pulse. "And you know that. I've overestimated you if you'll let it stay that way. Give me your regret, your disappointment, your _fury, _but you better damn well give me _something _because we've come much too far to coast at a standstill for the next couple centuries."

"She could be you. Don't forget that." Finally, he parted his lips and let something other than silence slip passed. "Any time, any place. The snow doesn't care which heart I throw at it."

"Don't threaten me. Especially not when you don't mean it." I hovered within myself, thinking to reach forward but reminding myself he wasn't safe. He was many things, but safe was never one of them.

"Maybe this time I do." He said. "Maybe this time, you've finally sold everything we are. Do you think that boy cares what will happen if a couple of monsters burn at the stake because of him?"

"He's a man. And men have hearts, and hearts have feelings. He knows what I've risked to sit by him these past few nights. And if anything, I'm the one who will suffer. The one who will burn. The rest of you-you're faerie tales, as far as he knows."

"It doesn't justify you telling, or you lying. _Or _you lying about telling. How can I trust you when you tell me lies with a smile? At least Katherine made a game of it."

"It doesn't justify _this." _My fingers splayed across the air, circling the carnage. "Katherine left her mark on both of us. She taught one of us to lie to others, and the other to lie to himself." I strode closer, ignoring the chill spreading across my skin and the way he bared his teeth. "I know how much it hurt you. I just couldn't leave him there in that room, counting the seconds to his own death. That could have been any of us, at one point or another."

"That's what makes it the worst." He whispered, so low even his malice couldn't taint it. Only the shadow of the loneliness he'd managed since the bite. He let me slide down into the snow next to him, but flinched when I leaned against him.

"I'm sorry. I don't want to send you back there. It was a bad time." I took his fingers, and watched his face. The furrow of his brow that made him look like a frustrated child, and the spark of his eyes that let me know he was alive despite the deadness of his expression.

"Take it back."

"I can't."

"Then why are you here?"

"You're blunt, and you're cocky, but you're mine. That's why I'm here."

"Little brother Stefan's probably got his panties in a bunch over this one."

"He does. And there's a high risk of eternal wedgie if we don't bury that poor girl and go figure ourselves out."

"I'm still angry. Being a villain sounds so _good _right now." He said it ironically, with that sarcastic widening around his eyes. The ghost of veins traced the tops of his cheekbones, and I understood how close he was to that edge.

"Mmm. But where would that leave me?"

"You can be my damsel in distress." He glanced down at me, eyelids casting shadows over his eyes.

"Not my style. But cute how you think I'd let you get away with it." I tapped him on the nose, watching as his raven hair cut into the wind and the veins collapsed under skin buffeted by the cold. I stood up, away from his warmth, and reached my hand out-now striped in blood from holding his hand. "Help me make it better." Because we couldn't make it right.

He obliged, eyes set with his own brand of regret. We buried the girl, away from the lamp post. We left her in a place I knew the sun would reach the following morning and every one after that. A place where she'd never be cold. I said something over her grave, in a language he couldn't understand. There were secrets only she deserved. I said 'sorry', and 'you could have lived'. I promised 'I won't forget you', and 'neither will he'. I whispered other things, things to do with my sins and solaces. And then we left her there for good, two figures caught in ice and night, to go home and figure ourselves out, together.


	2. Sleepless

I was awake. This in itself wasn't particularly surprising. I hadn't slept much in the past few weeks, following the living hell that was…actually, that's all that ever needs to be said about this town. Pretty much every day here had been some sort of conflict or nightmare or Elena giving me her judgy little eyes, 'Oh Damon, why can't you be as emotional as Stefan? I'm so disappointed, I know there's something good and human and _hurt_ underneath it all.' Because I'm a fucking _vampire. _We don't pet kittens or offer our shoulders to cry on-unless we're going to _eat someone. _Stefan was the freak of nature, not me. I'd learned long ago, very near the beginning of this life, that it was best to play the part you'd been given. It might leave holes in your heart, blood on the floor, crazy exes and corpses whispering your name…but it left _sanity in your skull. _I sighed, rubbing my hands across my face like it could wipe away the insomnia. It couldn't. I went to the kitchen. There were plenty of crystal tumblers covering the counter in patternless lines, all filled with a kiss of whiskey at the bottom of the glass. I'd had a tough day.

"There's got to be _something _in here to put me out." I muttered. I rifled through the cabinets, knocking over boxes and bottles and leaving them wherever they fell. Pills, elixirs…I'd take a fucking _tranquilizer _if I could find any that worked. The truth was that there's a whole lot of nothing for a vampire to do when his head keeps him up at night. I reached for an empty tumbler, taking it in a tired grip as I searched for the last drops of amber in the house. As I looked, I thought of Stefan, asleep upstairs, being a boring little able-to-sleep brother. Thought of Bonnie, trying to set me on fire. Thought of killing her, because I was cranky and she justified death a lot more than my usual fair. And because I _felt _like it. Then I thought of _not _killing her, because of the ghost it would leave in Elena's eyes. Damn. This was not the sort of thing I wanted to spend my sleepless nights thinking about. Getting in touch with my own head. _Damn. _I found the glass bottle, looking thoroughly abused. Fiddling with the top, I imagined Elena's judgy little eyes as I drank myself through the night.

I sighed and started a pot of coffee.


End file.
